The Duality of Man, the Banality of Evil: DUET (1.18)

Intended as a low-budget ‘bottle show’ to save money before the season finale, ‘Duet’ devotes most of its runtime to two characters steeped in conversation with each other. But this dense story and its tug-of-war between justice and vengeance have come to be regarded as one of the finest hours of Star Trek. The episode’s writers drew inspiration from the play ‘The Man in the Glass Booth,’ which in turn was inspired by the kidnapping and trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1961. That same court case would compel Hannah Arendt, a philosopher, political theorist and Holocaust survivor, to coin the term “the banality of evil” to grapple with the wide-scale complicity of the German people in the Holocaust atrocities. 

Cole and Lily delve into the post-WWII historical context that inspired Duet, including the Nuremberg Trials and the establishment of the state of Israel. Following the timeline through to contemporary crises of occupation and oppression, the episode also considers Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s writings on inherited violence and “cycles of rage.” But there is room for hope, too: we end with Hannah Arendt’s playbook for tackling hatred and fascism--which, as it turns out, hinges on more people simply talking to each other. 

🍷 Wine pairing: 'Serpico' Cabernet Sauvignon from Mitolo
❤️ Find us on Insta @deepspacewine_podcast or Facebook @Deep Space Wine Podcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: History repeating
• 21:45 Wine pairing
• 30:06 Episode recap
• 1:32:08 Final thoughts

Transcript

Lily: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, I'm Lily Rossen.

and I'm Cole Paulson. 

Lily: And welcome to Deep Space Wine, a podcast that attempts to recap and decode every episode of Deep Space Nine, the forgotten stepchild of the Star Trek universe. Each episode we will share a bottle of wine, wind down, and then wind ourselves up again with our strong opinions about DS9.

Because in our social experience, there is nothing people love more than when someone talks at length about Star Trek or wine. 

Cole: Or a Gwyneth Paltrow, Huey Lewis feature about the subculture of competitive karaoke singing, which I assume we're going to talk loads about this episode, right? Wow. 

Lily: Yeah. It's pretty niche, but people love it.

I love when 

Cole: my gosh, did I confuse the 2000 movie Duets with a Star Trek episode again? I'm always doing that, sorry.

Lily: Oh my god, that movie is so [00:01:00] bad. 

Cole: With a great soundtrack though, Cruisin Ugh Gwyneth, who knew she had those pipes? 

Lily: You're gonna fly away, do do do

Cole: Glad you're going my way,

Lily: do do do I love it when we're cruising together. All right. This is good. 

Cole: I had, full faith that you were going to get the reference.

And so I just, I just went for it. Thanks. Thanks for having my back. 

Lily: well, that's a good segue into, uh, what I feel like I should, what I should preface this episode of our podcast with, and that is a promise to the listeners. And that is a promise to not treat this episode in any way, like the last episode. 

So to be clear, to be clear what that means, that means not getting crazy drunk, 

and also not having Cole edit four hours of podcast conversation.

So that is my promise to 

Cole: you. How many magnums of wine have you had before this recording? 

Lily: Zero. Zero magnums. 

Cole: Okay! alright, then we might be onto something here..

Lily: I feel like this is a serious [00:02:00] episode. Don't you reckon?

Cole: I don't think that's a hot take. I'm with you there. 

Lily: This episode, we've we've got, Prejudice, Vengeance vs. Retribution, 

we've got War Crimes, we've got Genocide, um, all in all it's just like a barrel of laughs. 

Cole: it's a wild ride, and we are

Lily: We're cruising. 

Cole: I love it when we're cruising together. 

Lily: Yeah.

on, you're Gwyneth Paltrow, right? I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. 

Cole: Well, I don't remember anything about that movie except Cruisin and they're on some road trip and they're competing at various karaoke competitions across the U. S. 

Lily: Look, I'm just saying if there's a leggy blonde between the two of us, it's gonna be you.

Cole: These gams. Stop it. 

Lily: Um, could we say this episode is one of the best of season one? Could we say that? 

Cole: Yeah, it's, widely regarded as, the first great deep space nine episode. know, it's regarded as one of the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time. Maybe even, I don't know, one of the finest hours of television.

Yeah. 

Lily: I was reading it [00:03:00] was, the product of, the producers requesting that there be like a bottle episode, something to keep down the costs and to just be like quite dialogue heavy and keep out the expensive production. but as a result, we get this episode, so thank you, Pencil Pushers.

Cole: And then, it is so funny because whenever I would watch Star Trek as a kid, my older brother would walk into the room and unless, you know, unless the Klingons were attacking the station, unless there was this intense battle, he'd be like, okay, like, that's the only time Star Trek's good is when there's Klingons and stuff.

Most of the time it's just people talking to each other. 

Lily: Yeah, I mean, assessment. 

Cole: I mean, fair, but I mean, come on, isn't, Isn't that what we actually love? Star Trek? 

Lily: No, no, no. That's mostly people talking to each other. Yeah, but yeah. 

Cole: bring on those bottle episodes.

Lily: yeah, speaking of which, I also saw that, Iris Stephen Bear cites this as the first example of the long Cardassian monologue. so like the idea that Cardassians, they love to ruminate and, hear themselves [00:04:00] talk. Um, and we've asked the question, which alien race is the most Shakespearean?

But could we also ask the question, which race is the most Hamletian?

Cole: I love that. Do you remember that scene where Bashir gets Garak to read some Shakespeare? And he's like, yeah, Richard, the third, what a legend.

Like here's a character I can get on board with. I, um, yeah, so a few things. This is the fourth character I count from season one who spends most of his time dissembling. and playing mind games. Um, this just a preoccupation of the writers? they're fascinated by this manipulative deceptive character because, you know, listener, play a game with yourself and see how many of these you can count in season one 

one of whom is a Cardassian that we know and love. Uh, but it's, bit of an obsession and maybe they do make really compelling foils to the main characters who. generally are all about cutting to the chase, speaking the truth, and then they're stuck with these duckers and weavers truth and fiction, [00:05:00] 

Lily: I think it speaks to again, that this is DS9.

So the characters on board, they're not actually the sort of, Cardboard cut out, staff Leach officers who are constantly doing the right thing. these are almost morally gray. Well, they, they have to make morally gray decisions, because of the world in which they're inhabiting, 

you know, they're on the frontier. And, sort of facing these problems and dissembling themselves sometimes, like, think about one of the main characters, odo, who is by nature actually a shapeshifter. 

Cole: Yeah. you're right.

It, it welcomes in those gray areas that we get on Deep Space Nine with the main characters to and then, then the other thing is , the Cardassians who, Deep Space Nine does not just let the Cardassians be the bad guys. They actually have an entire.

story arc as a race over the course of the show . I love how they, look under the hood of this, villain.

Lily: Totally. And as much as they're the villain, they're, um, a thousand times more fascinating than the Bajorans. sorry. Now, now. 

C'mon, we all love They're a lot more fun to 

Cole: [00:06:00] listen to, I'll give you that. 

Lily: yeah, don't know, I think if you are into erudite kind of Slytherin type characters, they're your bag. And, uh, we all know my type, though. 

Cole: are you saying you've got a thing for the Cardies? Oh, that was racist of me, Excuse me, the Spoonheads. 

No, 

Lily: ah, Cardassians. Wow, wow, hate grimes. I need to work on 

Cole: myself, I'm 

Lily: sorry. look, I'm gonna say, I'm not into it, into it, but I'm definitely fascinated whenever a Cardassian is speaking, I don't know, I you just want to watch them, you want to listen to them, you want to hear what they have to say, and they're doublespeak, and don't know, it's just, it's, 

Cole: know, it's Klingons, when Klingons, when they're growing up, they learn how to use the Batleth.

Vulcans growing up learn how to use logic. You can really easily picture Cardassians being taught how to use rhetoric and oration. And, using the tongue as a weapon, I guess. Right. Yeah. 

Lily: And it's sort of quite an ancient, So the ancient Romans or [00:07:00] the Greeks or both, they all had to, um, they all had to sort of practice that rhetoric, as part of the education.

 maybe we can also. acknowledge the incredible performance of Harris Yulin, who plays the Cardassian prisoner.

 he's kind of the standout in this episode. 

Cole: so, I'm going to be honest with you because it's fun to be a little contrarian, but, um, I've always kind of struggled with his acting in this and I almost want to be, yeah, I don't know. I think when I was watching this when I was younger, it kind of got on my nerves.

I think I'm on board with it now, but this is, I know, maybe I'll get cancelled for this. 

Lily: You blow my mind sometimes, Cole, with your contrarian opinions. I'm such a, 

Cole: such an iconoclast, 

Lily: it's like sometimes you just don't want us to agree on things.

Cole: Oh, I hate 

podcasts where the hosts just agree with each other. And for the record, You know, the episode where Quark cross dresses is still the most [00:08:00] overlooked masterpiece of 1990s television.

Lily: My God, you're so pick me. look to me, I think it's quite nuanced. I think it's, operatic, maybe? I think it's definitely got a background in Shakespearean acting with sort of the speed and meter and intonation that he uses is really, think you can clearly see his background in the theater.

 I think he actually did some theatre work with, um, the actor who plays Garrick, Andrew Robinson. Um, so they've, they've done some Shakespeare together. Um, he's also a Jewish actor, which sort of adds a layer to this performance. Um, and then also for all the nerds out there, he plays the head of the watchers council in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Cole: I saw that and got really excited and I was going to, I was going to tell you.

Quentin Travers, the one and only. 

Lily: I know. I was like this guy, he's so funny. He looks familiar. 

Cole: mean, you can't, you can't tell when the guy is in Cardassian [00:09:00] makeup, but when you see him, it's definitely a face that you'd recognize from any number of things. For me, it's, it's from Buffy.

Lily: And if you're normcore, it's from Scarface, I guess. 

Cole: Sure, yeah, but we're not normcore. No, 

Lily: we're the nerds. Obviously. 

 but yes, those are my hot takes. None of them hot nor really takes, but, uh, maybe you can tell me a little bit about the thesis. 

Cole: Well, you, you mentioned, Harris Ulan is a Jewish actor.

so, say, this is the first episode where the link between the Cardassian occupation and the Holocaust is made and the reconstruction of Bajor. and the establishment of Israel is made. so question for you. Can we say this episode is about the Holocaust? 

Lily: Um, I think yes and no.

Uh, I it's broader than that, right? I think it looks at imperialism in general as well. But yeah, it definitely, draws allusions to the Holocaust. 

Cole: I completely agree with you.

Yes and [00:10:00] no. And that's the thing to me about great sci fi is that it can, you know, lift something out of its context, and then tell a story that helps us see the universality in it. and, and yes, the plot for this was in fact directly inspired by a play, The Man in the Glass Booth, which is about the trial of, an accused Nazi war criminal.

actually a Jewish man accused of Nazi war crimes. yeah, but depending on when or where you're talking in world history, who the Cardassians represent, who the Bajorans might represent, will produce all sorts of different answers. these are themes that unfortunately We can find the relevance over centuries of human history.

And Even, maybe especially right now, I find this episode to be the most urgently relevant one for the events of this decade. To me, themes are just screaming at me from the headlines every day. 

Lily: It's true, 

Cole: but yes, the Holocaust was the most direct reference for this. And so, I did do a deep dive into, World War II and post World War II history for this. I got really sucked [00:11:00] in, I had an amazing time researching this 

Lily: and I'm actually really excited 

Cole: to discuss it. 

Lily: World War II history, you are both a nerd and an encore.

I know, exactly, 

Cole: exactly. for what it's worth, researching the history did lead me to reading a lot prominent writers and thinkers who try to interpret this time. , in particular, I got pulled into the writings of two, Holocaust survivors who are both I think also very clear influences on this episode, whether directly or indirectly. 

Lily: Great. 

So I'm going to be drawing from three main sources. firstly, the Nuremberg trials. second, the philosopher Honda or rent. And her work on Nazi-ism and. 

to tell Terry aneurysm in Germany. And thirdly, Ellie Visal, a Nobel prize winning author who wrote about, surviving the Holocaust and the Jewish experience after the war. 

Lily: Great I'm so ready. . 

Cole: I'm gonna talk philosophy with you. hope you're ready for a little philosophy lesson.

I'm so ready. 

Lily: then just be like, fuck you, Harris Yulin. You can't act for shit. 

Cole: [00:12:00] Well, I mean, what's a podcast episode without a little controversy?

And I'm sure I'm sure that'll be the only source of controversy our entire discussion will spark. It's true. Yeah, 

Lily: I think with, um, the current, political turmoil, dragging Quentin Travers is probably not, high up there. 

 Okay. So 

Cole: You're ready for me. 

Lily: might 

Cole: so you and I enjoy thinking about the titles. this is titled Duet, which is maybe the most abstract title of an episode so far. I'm sure you've had a thought about what the duet might be referring to. 

Lily: I've had some thoughts.

It might influence the wine choice too, 

Cole: Oh, excellent. Well, I think there's a lot of dualities that you already mentioned. There's, there's all these tensions There's, culpability versus innocence, justice versus vengeance, bravery versus cowardice, Victimhood versus whatever you think the opposite of victimhood 

There's also, discussed, this is a Bottle episode and it's [00:13:00] two people talking, so. You could also argue that it's this duet of, two people standing opposite each other on either side of this force field. Um, but I've decided that the duet isn't just these two people, but two societies, uh, Cardassia and Bajor, because the, the conversation that this Maritza person and Kira have sort of plays out like a conversation between these two peoples. Maritza even literally plays the role of multiple Cardassians, 

 and so I like seeing it as this conversation between these two, races whose past is indelibly connected , 

but, I'd also argue that this episode is even more about the futures of Bajor and Cardassia, and what it means now that the occupation is over. 

Lily: Mm!

Cole: like it or not, their futures are still painfully linked to each other. so for our frame of reference for discussion, I want to look at post World War II history. the years after the Nazis were defeated, after the camps were liberated, and what the aftermath had in store for [00:14:00] both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. So Lily, let me take you back to 1946, 

Lily: Ooh!

Cole: one year after the camps were liberated, just like duet is set one year after Bajor is liberated.

Lily: Mm!

Cole: the Nuremberg trials were going on. And I think that's probably what most of us associate with, Nazi criminals put on trial. I had to look up and learn a lot about Nuremberg because that's honestly all I knew. Beyond that, do you, I mean, how much do you recall about the Nuremberg trials? 

Lily: Um, a limited scope, but I'm, ready to hear it.

Cole: Great. so Nuremberg, it was a case brought against 22 of the top Nazi leaders by the winners of World War II. So they were prosecuted by The U. S., the U. K., Russia, and France. and what, surprised me is actually it didn't start as prosecution against the Holocaust because when the case started people still barely even had an understanding that that had happened. it started as the winners of the war basically charging Germany with starting the war and charging them with invading other countries. [00:15:00] Which a lot of people at the time Germans and people around the world kind of thought that was a bit rich Because they're like, oh, okay. So, um the US the UK Russia You're mad at someone for invading other countries.

Is that something that you don't do? Interesting. Yeah

Lily: Sure.

Cole: So there was a whiff of hypocrisy a little controversy around that they sort of made up these crimes on the spot, which is to say they coined the terms crimes against peace, and especially crimes against humanity. That's the first time that we see this, this phrase being used.

and so Nuremberg would be the start of the era of international criminal law and human rights law. trying to prosecute crimes against humanity. Sure. 

Lily: I guess it, I guess it was an interesting time. It's what, like, post Enlightenment.

post, modernity. So it's, I guess these are concepts that come up when you think about society moving towards, a more modern perspective towards more enlightenment and then to have, something as horrific as, the atrocities that played out. I don't know. 

Cole: the concept of human rights was very fresh and it became even more, well, as, the realities of the [00:16:00] atrocities of World War II came to light , the concept really took hold and was part of the, central tenet for the existence of the United Nations, which of course was born out of World War II. so surprising a lot of people, Nuremberg wasn't a show trial. It wasn't just the winners, having their way with the losers. It was, bona fide trial where Of the 22 men put on trial, only 12 were sentenced to death, seven were given life sentences, and three were actually acquitted and just released to go right there in the courtroom on the spot, surprising everyone.

Cole: yeah, these guys were surprised as everyone, they're like, are you sure we can, we can walk away.

but as the trial continued, and as evidence emerged from the concentration camps, it served as a megaphone to show the world what had actually happened. And for, for everyone, and especially the German people to suddenly start having a reckoning with what was going on, in their backyards and, how much they were aware and how much they had, they'd played a hand in, in bringing about, horror.

And it got a lot of people asking, how did the [00:17:00] Holocaust come to happen? is the Nazi regime the epitome , of pure evil? And they brought in psychologists and they did inkblot tests and it seemed like this opportunity to look into the face of evil and finally understand what compels a person to commit atrocities.

Lily: hmm.

Cole: And someone who was watching these trials really closely was Hannah Arendt. have you heard of Hannah Arendt? 

Lily: I have. , she's the banality of evil person. Boom. Is that her? Yes, 

Cole: German born Jewish woman she got arrested back in the 30s in Germany for researching growing antisemitism, fled to France, from there fled to New York, and became a philosopher, political theorist, who was really focused on trying to understand how the rise of totalitarianism happened in Germany, how the Nazi party had been elected, and how German society had apparently, allowed the Holocaust to happen, turned a tacitly endorsed it, 

and in fact, she, would travel to go observe another trial, a few years after Nuremberg, the trial of Adolf [00:18:00] Eichmann in Jerusalem. and I'll get more into the trial later, but it was watching this trial of this quote unquote desk killer. They called Adolf Eichmann a desk killer because he sat at a desk and ordered the execution of hundreds and thousands of Jews. 

Lily: Mm 

Cole: And watching this trial and listening to this man is where Hannah Arendt came up with the concept of banality of evil, which became one of the most, controversial, but most discussed, philosophical concepts of the 20th century. and it was really cool. research led me to the concept of banality of evil, which led me to this trial of Adolf Eichmann, and that trial was actually the direct influence for that play, Man in the Glass Booth, which was this.

the influence for this episode. So, makes sense for me to be doing a little dive on Hannah Arendt. 

Lily: sure.

The, um, the evil bureaucrat. 

Cole: Yes. so she watched this trial of Adolf Eichmann who had, ordered the execution of hundreds of thousands of Jews. and at the end of the trial, he was, ordered to be executed by the Israeli state. and I just briefly before we, get into the wine and [00:19:00] the discussion, I want to, go back to this concept of, the duet and dualities, because that trial, To me, it showcases one of the most interesting dualities that's in this episode of, victim and maybe executioner, we can call it, victim and perpetrator.

let me just share one quote from another Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. I mentioned earlier. Wiesel, also a concentration camp survivor. he wrote a novel that I'll get into later about a survivor of Auschwitz who then becomes a freedom fighter. And he's fighting against, an enemy occupier.

And his job is to execute. an enemy hostage as retribution for the enemy killing one of his fellow freedom fighters. so, you know, maybe you can see why that was a useful, story to bring up for some of the characters in this. and Vizel has this quote where this, guy is, thinking about the fact that he's been a victim and now tasked with being an executioner and he says, both victim and executioner are playing a role which has been imposed upon him.

the two [00:20:00] roles lie at the extremities of the estate of man, but the tragic thing is the imposition. neither or Maritza ever asked to be in either of these positions. they both had these, lots in life thrust upon them. Kira was born into the occupation.

but here they are being at the, the two extremes of the state of man, as Wiesel puts it. And, um, I think one interesting question for us to, to think about as we discuss the episode is, in duet, at any given moment, um, Who is who? the victim? Who's the executioner? 

Lily: Mm.

Cole: so, as you said, it's gonna be a barrel of fun, discussion.

Lily: No, I'm really excited to get into it. and I think No, no, I am. And I think, um, it's a bottle episode that, uh, lends itself to discussion. And, by its very nature, every podcast that we do is a bottle episode. Cause it's just the two of us, uh, drinking a bottle in a room. Every episode is a bottle [00:21:00] episode. Thank you. 

Cole: Love that 

Lily: Sorry. I went there.

I'm really trying to not be glib. 

Cole: Oh, but it's our brand, baby. 

Lily: It's really hard. And it feels like, you know that like, episode of Seinfeld where, Derry gets caught making out with someone during Schindler's List. I'm like, I do not want that to be the vibe of this episode, but also, know 

Cole: thyself.

That's from Hamlet. 

Lily: Well, 

Cole: well, all I'm going to say is, little teaser about a rant. Never underestimate the power of two people having a conversation in a room together. 

Lily: That's it. I'm really excited and you've, you've done your due diligence, Cole, in this episode.

I've, I've come fresh as a newborn babe, uh, so. Great. 

Lily: May I?

Cole: , I brought the philosophy, I brought the history research. What did you bring to the table, Lily? 

Lily: I brought, the bottle to this bottle episode, and it is a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon CABSAV, this is, from McLaren Bale. it's from a producer called. [00:22:00] Mitolo, and this is Serpico, Cabernet Sauvignon. So this is like from their premium range. McLaren Vale. We've had some wines from this region before.

It's a region in South Australia. One of my favorite places, to get wine from. why Cab Sav? You might ask. This is not one of my favorite kinds of wine to drink, and you might know that about me, Cole. 

Cole: Well, see, I, for me, you can never go wrong with Cab Sav I've never once been, like, disappointed, but maybe it's because I've never had, like high expectations for Cab Sav..

Lily: Okay, and I'm gonna tell you, why, why that is. 

Cole: Educate me. 

Lily: And also why you can really go wrong. but it's great. It's great that you love it. I do not, but this is one of the most widely known and produced wines on the market. So I think it's like a familiarity thing. A lot of people know the wine, so they feel comfortable buying it then maybe they, you know, find some wines that they really like It's grown in nearly every wine growing country, possibly like sort of earliest and best known for the Bordeaux wines, and these are routinely blended with Merlot. it's actually a relatively new variety, So it's not like an ancient [00:23:00] one.

It's the product of an Cab and Stavignon Blanc. and this happened during the 17th century in southwestern France. the grape is really easy to cultivate and harvest. cause it has, like thick skins, and really hardy vines. So therefore it's resistant to lots of the things that destroy grapes and vines, like frost and rot and insects and things. and it also has, a consistent kind of structure to it. so when you make the wine, it's got quite a consistent flavor. so this results in. having typical characteristics for a wine. So I think, you know, you go have a Chardonnay from somewhere and a Chardonnay from somewhere else, and they're just wildly different things.

whereas a Cab Sav is kind of a Cab Sav. does that make sense? Yeah, totally. That's kind of exactly what you were saying. so familiarity has really helped with selling CABSAV, to consumers such as Cole Paulson, and many other people. such a sucker. No, no, it's you know, the majority have spoken and they all like CABSAV. but it has garnered some criticism [00:24:00] of Cab Sav as a colonizer wine. this is a wine that takes over regions at the expense of indigenous grape varieties. Oof. Right? Is that why you chose this wine for this episode? Maybe, maybe. so yeah, so basically, you know, there's certain regions where they've got these really interesting indigenous grape varietals, but because they want to make something that people buy, not some random varietal, they'll plant Capsaicin knowing that, it'll A, grow, B, B, harvested and cultivated, and C, sell. so, you know, capitalism is to blame once again. the Arendt, 

Cole: she has some things to say about capitalism.

Woo hoo 

Lily: hoo! the classic profile of a cab sav is that it's full bodied, high in tannins, and has a notable acidity. And, these other qualities contribute to the wine, being able to be aged. So a lot of people buy Cab Savs and it's like a bit safer to age them than other wines.

that's Cabernet Sauvignon. the particular wine that we're drinking is, kind of interesting because it's, made with the, um, [00:25:00] Apacemento technique. Have you heard of this or have you heard of 

Cole: Apacemento. 

Lily: Apacemento. Have you heard of, Amarone? No. or the longer form of that is Amarone della Valpolicella is the She's 

Cole: making me feel more and more ignorant. 

Lily: look, you can tell me about Hannah Arendt and I will tell you about Amirani Adela 

Cole: It's a beautiful dynamic. 

Lily: the process is, appassimento, which in Italian means to dry and shrivel. So basically take the grapes and you, dry them before processing them.

And this concentrates the remaining sugars and flavors of the grape, because of the water evaporation. so because of this process in this wine. it contributes to, the flavor. it gives like the palette a plushness, a complexity. the tannins are a bit silkier.

Cole: See, I think this is why look, I like Cab Sav because you can use adjectives like plushy and silk. This, 

Lily: I'm not talking like. That's because that's That's because of the Opacimento. I'm not just going to buy any Cab Sav, Cole.[00:26:00] 

Cole: Great. It's just, we're finally, we're dealing with adjectives that I want in my mouth as opposed to like iron and animal hide. Uh, this is my, this is my language. We are different 

Lily: people. no, I think this is a really nice wine. I'll just take you through a few more descriptors and then let's hop into the episode.

this is from, a review. Inky dark red, leafy herbal flavors are strong with fresh cut grass, citronella, black tea leaves. . another one is 

the impressive flavors, concentrated by the drying process, are powerful and complex, with pyrazine herbals and dried fig. 

Cole: Excuse me, pyrazine herbals? Yes, uh, yes. a dictionary 

Lily: for So, um, pyrazine it's a chemical compound which kind of gives, like green vegetal flavors. So a lot of the time when people drink CABSAV, they talk about green bell peppers or green capsicums if you are from Australia.

Yeah. And so it's sort of that, Savory, but sort of [00:27:00] fresh green flavor, 

Cole: that sounds great. 

Lily: And then one last, I've got, dense and mouth coating. The palate is dominated by flavors of ripe black fruits, molasses, and licorice. And there is a bright acidity that helps to balance the powerful flavors. 

Cole: Ah, see, these are all foods. These foods. These are all other things that you can put in your mouth. It's not like tar and dirt and musk. I could get on board 

Lily: with this. yeah. Look, when you talk about full bodied with wines, that is, talking about the sugar content. So these are, higher alcohol, higher sugars.

and I think that's sort of that fruitiness. appeals to a lot of people as well, Um, but why did I choose Cab Sav, Cole? 

Cole: Well, is that the duality of two varietals entwined together 

Lily: That is the, the duality of man perhaps, um, bit of a duet happening. 

look, I did briefly go down a rabbit hole of Joseph Conrad. 

Cole: Wait, wait, wait, you, you almost went into Joseph Conrad [00:28:00] territory. 

Lily: Well, because I started, I started thinking about a blending of, a blending of two varietals.

 so I started thinking about the duality of man, which obviously took me to Joseph Conrad. I don't know where it takes you. 

Cole: can you define, the duality of man. 

Lily: Um, well, there's a lot of different theories about it, but I think it, looks to the innate evil and also goodness inside every person.

Um, so I know we joke about multitudes all the time, but, , I guess it's, , looking at the two, parts of the self, that someone, can like be a loving parent, but then go out and commit atrocities or, 

Cole: Yes. 

 I mean, last night I watched, the Zone of Interest, 

Lily: mm 

Cole: which is hugely irrelevant for what Arendt was trying to get under, like, how could the perpetrators of the Holocaust just live life like normal and then turn around and commit horrific things? You know, how could they take their kids swimming in the morning and then operate gas chamber in the afternoon? 

Lily: Yeah, the Hara. 

Cole: Yes. 

Lily: All right, Cole, 

All right, Cole, should [00:29:00] we duet? Oh, let's duet! Should we cruise? I'm gonna cruise. it's starting to feel a bit like making out in Schindler's List. . , 

I love 

Cole: We 

Lily: cruising. I 

Cole: mean, my plan was to, put my one joke at the very, very beginning of the episode.

Just move on. 

Lily: I am a callback queen. How dare you? How 

Cole: How long have you had that? let's duet joke queued up? Like five minutes or five days? 

Lily: I mean, apologies again to the listeners. I've been sick for a long time. , and we've been trying to do this.

So that's why we haven't recorded put this out there. Uh, so I'm going to say like a month. 

Cole: Yeah. Oh, well, , I love it when we're cruising together. Cheers. 

Lily: Cheers. 

Cole: Ding! 

Lily: Right. All right, 

Cole: Glib. Glib, sorry. 

Lily: look, I knew it would be the theme of this episode and I, I made some promises I can't keep. I [00:30:00] shouldn't do 

Cole: Minimal, minimal glibness. 

Lily: All right. Episode 18, Duet. 

Thanks for watching!

Lily: We're in Ops and Kira and Dax are sharing some stories from their naughty youth. And, oh, that we could have fun and enjoy their childhood hijinks, but that's not going to be this episode, folks. 

Cole: Do you think, come on, we're here overanalyzing, but was this just filler or is there some reason that they were like, once Kira was a rebellious young child?

I don't know. Well, I 

Lily: think there's a callback to her age, being 12 years old when she joins the resistance. So, I think it's sort of that there was a innocence that was lost. 

Cole: Yeah, there's that stolen childhood. 

Lily: And look, Maybe it's just, um, giving the people what they want. Like I just want to see Kira and Dax shooting the shit. So 

Cole: This scene passes the Bechdel test. Oh yeah.

Moving on. 

Lily: Oh God. all right. A very terrifying looking freighter alien requests permission to dock. his face is like if a [00:31:00] starfish and a scrotum had a baby. 

You didn't think I was going to say scrotum in this episode and then, then I didn't. 

Cole: No one expects the scrotum, 

Lily: but yes, there's a passenger on board, with a medical condition called Kalinora. He's beamed to the infirmary, but a close up on Kira tells us that this is, um, some Bajoran shit that's about to go down. apparently the condition 

Cole: But don't worry everyone, it's a good Bajoran episode. 

Lily: Yes! It's chill vibes. 

apparently the condition is the result of a mining accident and a forced labor camp. and the people that have it are the survivors of Gala Tip, the labor camp. Kira wants to meet this brave survivor. what, oh, in the infirmary is a Cardassian 

Cole: dun, dun, dun. 

Lily: Yeah. And I was, doing jazz hands like Garrick in, in case anyone, uh, wants a visual of me right now.

Cole: are a [00:32:00] Cardassian. 

Lily: Thank you. 

Cole: We didn't say in the intro, but one reason this episode does work so well is the structure and, they keep throwing these, twists, these 180 degree twists in the plot at us that just upend everything you think, you know, um, the very first one of many.

Kira is so excited. She's going to see a war hero, a survivor of a labor camp, but it's actually a perpetrator of the camp, staring her in the face. 

Lily: It's a Cardassian and he has a luscious. He does have good hair, doesn't he? A lot of the Cardassians do. I feel like the wig budget for Cardassians is like higher than, than some of the other aliens.

Cole: Do you think it's, I think it's made from real human hair? Makeup watch? 

Lily: Yeah, I think so. It's a good wig. Nice. 

Cole: Great wig. 

Lily: Luscious. Kira is, she is blown over by this and she calls Odo insecurity, to like, quickly come and arrest this person. And that's the teaser. 

Cole: Extreme close up. Kira. Yeah. Cardassian. Kira. Cardassian.

Lily: The first of many. Like a telenovela. 

yeah, so this guy, he attempts to flee, [00:33:00] but Odo's crack security team is all over it. And Kira insists that this guy needs to be locked up, and Odo questions why he ran, if he's not a criminal.

Can I just say, in my 

Cole: defense of my weirdly knocking Harris Yulin, I've just never liked the way he gets up and runs away. he's just it's not very convincing. 

Lily: Well, maybe we can revisit, we can revisit that at the end of the episode. Why he's running away might not be like full on running away.

Like maybe he wants to get caught, you know, 

Cole: this episode's got layers. All right, carry on. 

Lily: I love your weird teenage Cole. prejudices against people in this show. It's like some opinion that you formed when you were like 13 years old and it rears its head. And you have this really, eloquent and sort of educated critique of a lot of things about this show.

And then you're just like, Oh, That guy runs funny. It's 

Cole: what, the people want, Lily. They're tuning in to hear 13 year old Cole's hot takes on how this Cardassian's running. [00:34:00] It's 

Lily: the, duality of man, you and Cole.

Cole: Oh, the duality of a podcast. 

Lily: But yeah, so Odo's questioning this guy, why did you run? And he's like, well, look, there was a Bajoran fanatic and she has hate in her eyes and she wants to kill me and rah, rah, sort of the first time he espouses this idea about, whether Bajorans are the victims or the, persecutors.

Cole: yeah. That The hateful fanatics.

Lily: The hateful fanatics. Kira says this guy's a war criminal and that is enough for Odo and he locks him up, cause that is Odo's way. his name is, Eamon Maritza, and apparently he's not on Bajoran's most wanted list.

He's just some Cardassian. but Kira insists that this guy's a baddie, and even though it might not be technically legal to throw him in a cell without evidence, she tells this harrowing story about, the fact that to have Kalinora, you have to have served at Galatep, and that she liberated this camp 12 years ago.

there were bodies that were starved, brutalized, there were rapes, there were beatings, the elderly were buried alive. It's sort of every, you know, image of, I [00:35:00] guess, the Holocaust or a genocide that you can sort of conjure up, in 

Cole: your mind. Yeah. Or, any other death camps, labor camps, the killing fields of Cambodia.

Um, 

Cole: And Kira, yeah, So he must've been at Galatep. And so she's like, well, I'm charging him with being there.

The crime is just being, privy to what happened at, gtech. Um, if you were there and being perpetrator, if were not a 

Lily: then you were a persecutor. Yep. You were an executioner. so Cisco questions Maritza, in his cell. And Mariza denies actually having call Nora and serving at this labor camp.

 and he claims that he's a clerk. He's never been to Bei. the first of many, bits of lore that he sets up about himself that may or may not be true. but, in, An opposite cell, there's a drunk Bajoran, who is wearing a blue shirt, and I'm gonna call it Chekhovian blue, um, Thank you. 

Cole: Wait, what, Chekhovian? Is this, like Chekhov's blue. 

Lily: Chekhov's blue shirt. 

Cole: Oh, God bless you. 

Lily: Thank you. and this Bajoran, he's drunk and [00:36:00] he's kind of abusive and he says, I won't be kept in here with one of those, referring to Cardassians. 

Cole: I really love framing of seeing this drunk, just sort of stirring in the background, just sort of stirring to life. He's just like emerges as this sort of shadow in the background He's a drunk, but he's also really dangerous.

. Um, 

Lily: for me, it kind the sort scary southern racist, hillbilly, who, you know, has a confederate flag and, doesn't, and 

Cole: just spits racist vitriol out of his mouth. Totally. 

Lily: Yeah. 

Cole: And is on a first name basis with the, uh, the authorities.

He's like, no, I'll, no. Yeah, 

Lily: yeah, yeah. 

Cole: The town drunk 

Lily: Well, it turns out that, This guy is dissembling, because Julian, he's proven that this guy Aemon roots out it. does have Kalinora and thus was at the labor camp, 

Cole: Hmm.

Lily: and then it cuts to the first minister of Bajor who calls Sisko and they have this pretty fucked up conversation, Mm. Mm. where this guy congratulates Sisko on capturing a prisoner of the state. and he's like, we want him and we will have him, but Sisko isn't having any of [00:37:00] this sort of kangaroo court business.

He wants to verify some more facts. But it seems that once again, Kira has gone behind his back. and it's sort of maybe a slight call back to the previous episode. 

Cole: Oh, absolutely. so, so Sisko here, he is, he's playing the role of the, morally righteous Federation who's not going to leap to conclusions, who is going to give everyone, Due process. and it's. you saw the same energy from, Nuremberg when the four victors of World War II, initiated these trials. they wanted to make really clear that they were going to treat it as, as a fair trial. . I thought it was really interesting.

They made these opening remarks at the very beginning of, of day one of Nuremberg, where the prosecutor says, I think an American prosecutor says, we have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people. The German people should know by now. We hold them in no fear and in no hate. These criminals knew how to use other people as tools.

Mm. Sisko is trying to give this man who claims to be a, a file clerk, I suppose that same, benefit of the doubt. 

Lily: Mm innocent until proven [00:38:00] guilty, 

All right. In this next scene, before you ask, I have no idea what that flower arrangement is. Ah, Lily . I don't know what that, what that mess is. 

Cole: finds Kira sitting at a table with this gigantic flower 

Lily: , and it's, look, it's taking up a lot of energy in this scene. It's like another character. I'm going to say it's too much.

Cole: Also, the staging of this I found, very odd, because they've stuck this table in the middle of the room where you have to like trip over Kira if you're just trying to like walk down the promenade .

Lily: Yeah.

maybe they didn't want to add to the budget of having to have the actual repliment in

And like, they've gone way over in budget for fresh florals, so. 

Cole: The

bottle episode strikes back. It 

Lily: does. So in this scene, Kira and Sisko sort of cross swords over this minister putting Kira in charge, of the investigation.

Sisko says, you know, Minister Kval doesn't run this station, and Sisko sort of insists that they have to verify the man's identity and story, at which point then he can be handed over to Bajor, for due process. Um, And it's because [00:39:00] Sisko thinks Kira can't be objective. and she agrees with this, but then plays the, I'm your first officer card, and insists that she'll behave.

Cole: Yeah. She drops the, like, you called me a friend once. A little callback to another 

Lily: episode. I know. Yeah. But I guess she's also being honest. She's saying, yeah, I'm probably not impartial. and she wants to do it for the victims. the ones who moved too slowly and then never moved again. yeah.

So yeah, the result of this scene is that Sisko allows it, he lets this play out, which I think is maybe a turning point in their relationship, sort of a counterpoint to the last episode's events where they were pitted against each other, so he sort of gives her the benefit of the doubt.

Cole: Yeah, and I think it is actually a, a controversial decision. so there was actually very minimal involvement from the Jewish people in the Nuremberg trial. It the prosecution were, were the victors from the other countries.

 And there was very minimal Jewish involvement. Some of the judges were Jewish. But otherwise, Jewish people had very little agency and very little say in the process.

Lily: Mm 

Cole: and so right here, Akira is saying, but how dare you, this is our fight and this is us seeking [00:40:00] justice. I mentioned the trial that Hannah Arendt went to witness in Jerusalem against, Adolf Eichmann. And, I'll tell you a little bit more about the background of that trial.

So Adolf Eichmann, had fled. He was this desk killer, who had fled to Argentina after World War II, and he was kidnapped by the Mossad and taken to Jerusalem to sit trial on the Israeli Supreme Court. And being tried by the Israeli people certainly gave his trial a lot more weight than Nuremberg.

but what's interesting is at the same time, Hannah Arendt had a lot of reservations about how the whole trial even came about. and it, kind of taps into something a little more sinister that we got a whiff of when Sisko was speaking to the Bajoran first minister, the sort of like, we want him and we will have him.

Lily: Yeah.

Cole: I mean, he was kidnapped and brought to another country, which is in violation international law. 

Cole: , Arendt pointed out that if the Israeli court hadn't already decided he was guilty, the Israelis would have never dared kidnapping him in violation of Argentine and international law. So it was sort of, [00:41:00] uh, fait accompli that this man would be convicted . and uh, Arendt certainly doesn't disagree that this man is guilty of war atrocities. But, I mean, there's an episode in season 2 of Deep Space Nine where O'Brien is kidnapped by the Cardassians to face trial, and he's declared guilty until proven innocent. Um, and, All I'm going to say is if the methods your country uses to bring people to justice can be compared to the Cardassians, it's not a good look. 

Lily: yeah. I was thinking of that parallel as well. 

Cole: and read really worried that it was just more than showing Eichmann's guilt.

It was, as much about showing what the state of Israel was capable of which I think is interesting because I think it comes through very clear from the, first minister talking to Sisko. what his, arrest and capture represents beyond, case itself. 

Lily: Yeah. It's very, uh, vengeance driven, like eye for an eye rather than, due process. 

Cole: due process. 

Lily: Kira walks into Odo's office, and Odo is letting, Bajoran go. [00:42:00] Kira walks in, the beginning of the first interrogation, between Kira and Maritza.

and Fritz is eating semal stew, which apparently could use a little yammick sauce. And do the Canisians only have one condiment? Do they just Yammick 

Cole: sauce! Is 

Lily: yammick sauce the only thing they put on their food?

Cole: That's my question. it's clearly the best one, does every major, I mean, can we name the major condiments of, human food? cultures, like ketchup for Americans, Vegemite for Australians. Sure. 

Lily: But each of these things have a place and they seem to sort of indiscriminately want to throw yummy sauce on everything.

Anyway, I'm not a Cardassian as much as, might appear so . 

 as I was saying, this is the first interrogation, between Kira and Maritza. Maritza does have Kalinora, he worked under Gull, who was known as the Butcher of Galatep, so he was sort of the one in charge of this labor camp. 

apparently his story that he was a filing clerk for the records office is true, at [00:43:00] this point in time, , he makes the assertion that he didn't want to be involved in military service, which is kind of interesting, But also he denies that any atrocities took place at Galatep, and in fact that the stories of the atrocities were propaganda started by Cardassians to, sort of create this, victim, mentality, 

Right 

Lily: And his demeanor is really interesting in this scene. I personally think his timing is quite incredible. Like he sort of gives these short instantaneous answers. and like some other people that I know, he's really glib. it's like quite, quite reminiscent of Garrett, 

Yes

Lily: and then he also says something quite interesting. , why bother with real mass murder when the reports of them would have had the same effect? Um, which is, Terrifying and also like a bit sort of Holocaust denial. Cole, your thoughts on this scene?

Cole: I love at the beginning, immediately calls Kira out on, Doing this out of passion rather than duty. Kira's like, well, this is my job to interrogate you. And he's like, no, it's not. Which is totally valid. Like, she begged Sisko to let her do this anyways. [00:44:00] He says, Cardassians is your passion. 

I also love the choice to make Maritza the supposed filing clerk. so filing clerks at the concentration camps in Germany. actually are responsible. have them to thank for a lot of the prosecutions because they preserved this evidence.

These were meticulous filing clerks who took pride in their work and documented everything, names of everyone who was killed, and even though they were ordered by their superiors as the war was being lost to destroy it, a lot of these filing clerks refused to destroy their files.

And so in a way they're actually heroes of the trials and have them to thank for understanding what happened at these camps. Don't really know the motivations for why they refused to destroy these files.

It might have just been pride in their work, or it might have been, um, 

Lily: A deeper sense of humanity. 

Cole: yeah. there was one file clerk who hid the records of all the deaths at a camp in a ceiling, instead of destroying them like he was ordered to.[00:45:00] 

And then he, He led the Allied soldiers to find those 

those 

records 

Cole: so I think the choice of filing clerk actually really clever, intentionally or not, I'd love to know, so then want to use this scene to talk about, Hannah Arendt's concept of the banality of evil. 

Because when she was sitting in the courtroom listening to this man, Adolf Eichmann, he was talking a lot like Maritza was talking in this scene. He was speaking very matter of factly about the atrocities. he wasn't, projecting this idea of this evil genius. He was just saying, Oh yes, the atrocities.

that was a matter of course. that was a process of, the need to be efficient. and we were all just following orders. 

Lily: Mm 

Cole: and when Arendt was listening to this, everyone was expecting Eichmann to have this sort of quote unquote satanic greatness to him.

She called it to be this evil genius. But instead, she was struck by his complete ordinariness. He was a bland bureaucrat. he was, she said, terribly and terrifyingly normal. and he, was sort of a boring dude. He lacked imagination. He spoke in [00:46:00] legalese. and he didn't have this really strong animus against the Jewish people.

And so she came up with this idea that the Nazis are not there's just this banality to what they did and to them carrying out orders. there's this mundane way they were just, doing what they were told, which in a way is almost more disturbing than the idea that we defeated this great evil and the Nazis.

and so that's where, where the term, the banality of evil came from. 

Lily: Yeah. And I guess also that emphasis on efficiency, which is something that, sort of is described, by Maritza over and over again, that, that, he as the filing clerk, was super efficient and had this like amazing filing system.

In fact, to the point that he's now, off teaching it at the military academy. 

exactly His, his 

Cole: filing systems were exemplary. masterpiece of meticulous exactitude. 

Lily: And this is sort of his contribution to the Empire

Cole: Yeah, and I'm glad you caught that because I'll actually get so the next question for a rant was How did evil become so banal in German society?

And get a little bit more into that later, but it was very controversial for her to [00:47:00] say no this man isn't evil in his bones He is conducting evil acts even though he's the most run of the mill like normie bro next door. And what does that mean about totalitarianism and what was happening in Germany?

Lily: Yeah. and I think what you were saying before, sort of this lack of imagination, which I think sort of in some ways goes hand in hand with a lack of empathy, maybe that it's not, evil, but that it's, I guess this inability to extrapolate.

that if this is something that's happening, this is how it affects this person. And if I could put myself in their shoes, I wouldn't want to be there. 

Yeah. I actually, I love that link. 

Cole: Imagination and empathy. and so the next question is, Is this something that can be cultivated or it's opposite.

Can it be sort of, stifled intentionally? So, Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . where did this lack of empathy and lack of imagination come from? Mm. 

Lily: so, uh, where in Cisco's office and he's convening with Dukat on his little screen, 

Ducat!

Only the second time we've seen this 

Cole: guy.

God, is it? After the pilot. 

Lily: This season [00:48:00] one, All my favorite Cardassians, they don't get a lot of airtime, but uh, that's remedied in season two 

Cole: They don't. But it is, it's so fitting that they do bring ucat back for this, because talking about this, inextricably linked relationship between Cardassians and Bean.

I mean, UCAT is the epitome of that, the messiness of that. the former ruler of the occupation. 

Lily: Mm. particularly with the crucible of, DS9. 

Cole: oof. 

Lily: they're negotiating the release of Merita. Dukat is claiming that it's all blind accusations, Bajorans are just obsessed with these imagined defences, it's sort of all propaganda, and that frankly it's quite distasteful, and Sisko has a pretty good line, he says I suppose if you're a Bajoran, so it was the occupation, and Dukat is not happy with that, but I gave that a snap. 

Cole: Ugh, well, and it's classic. Does Dukat also take the prize for, uh, rhetorical tricks and, purple prose Euphemism.

I mean, he calls, he calls basically the, Bajoran Holocaust, alleged Cardassian improprieties. [00:49:00] My lord. 

Lily: Yeah. He's a fuck boy. he just loves Bajoran women. know what to let me cut to Kira and Dax. Kira's looking through the wormhole. And they're discussing Whoa, whoa, whoa, 

Cole: whoa, whoa. What? Are you really not gonna Whoa, whoa, whoa, what'd I 

Lily: miss? What'd I miss? Sorry. 

Cole: Tell me. I mean, I thought this scene would excite you more than any other. 

We're talking Fashion Watch, my friend. 

Lily: No, no, I missed it. 

Cole: The one and only Fashion Watch this whole episode. Oh, no. Can you please? watch the beginning of this scene because the coolest looking gold alien is just strolling past and he deserves a moment in the sun. 

Lily: I let myself down sometimes, you know, and I'm the first to admit that.

Cole: when you're recapping episodes about the Holocaust, you don't always have time for fashion watch, I get it. 

Lily: Hang on, hang on, let me pull it up. 

Oh man! Oh 

Cole: shit! Hello! Hello! 

Lily: Great! 

Cole: This dude, so he's, like six foot tall, he doesn't have a [00:50:00] mouth, as it were, but he's got this glorious golden suit.

My favorite thing though is his swagger, like he's just swaggering through promenade as if he knows. He is strutting through the middle of a holocaust episode, and he has no place in it, but we should all just take a moment to appreciate him, 

Lily: He's definitely walking around in a different TV show, that's for sure. 

Cole: It's almost like some other sci fi show. He got lost the Paramount lot, and he's like, Oh, is this not? not like a cantina. 

Lily: yeah, exactly. About to play some smooth jazz in a cantina. he does kind of have a mouth.

It's like a vertical slit. 

Cole: It's a vertical slit mouth and we, want to see how it's used, but we'll never get that chance. So, 

Lily: Oh man, so many questions. Employ 

Cole: that power of imagination that Adolf Eichmann 

didn't possess. 

Lily: to be able to walk around the world with the confidence of that vertical slit.

Gold suit alien, you know, 

Cole: it's the swagger 

Lily: Yeah. 

Cole: Great. 

Lily: Love it All right, as you were. 

well Kira's standing in the wormhole, and is just [00:51:00] so overcome with thought she doesn't see that swaggering gold alien walk past. Um, and I, I see you Kira.

uh, Dax joins her and they sort of discuss the difference between seeking the truth and seeking vengeance. 

 is clearly grappling with something and she's saying, well, you know, I actually don't want this guy to be just a file clerk. I want him to be the person I assign the blame for these atrocities I want 

Cole: him to be something worse. Yeah, 

Lily: want him to be the big bad that, was a persecutor executioner.

and then Dax kind of says something, and maybe you can explain it to me. I feel like she's Being philosophical, but I don't really understand what she's trying to say. don't know, I think sometimes they give Dax these lines that are trying to be really wise because, you know, she has the wisdom of ages, but 

well, it's still early days Dax 

Cole: and they're still trying to make her, like, the Guinan of the show. They keep trying to make Dax be Guinan. the scene is a Guinan scene, but that's not who Dax is. Jadzia's actually No. A much more fully realized character, and she does not exist just to [00:52:00] spout wisdom at her friends, for five minutes an episode, but they hadn't figured that out yet, so the scene is a little clunky.

Lily: It is a little clunky, but she does kind of say that, um, Roots punishment, as much as you want it to act like a kind of closure, it probably won't ever feel that way. There won't be closure. 

Cole: Yeah. 

she's calling Kira out on that, that duality of, vengeance versus justice 

Lily: Mm.

Cole: Yeah, I, I found a scene when I watched it, I found it a tad hokey, especially Kira just staring out the window in soul searching. but then I linked it to this Elie Wiesel novel. And so, um, Allow me quickly touch back on that Wiesel novel I mentioned at the beginning. So, Wiesel is, he's most known for his memoir, Night, about his experiences as a teenager at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Have, have you read Night? I had to read it in high school history class. 

Lily: No, I didn't. No. 

Cole: that's what he's, he's most known for. And really interestingly, he said that everything he's written Since night is a commentary somehow on that and on his experiences at the camp, and he wrote, a follow up [00:53:00] tonight called Dawn.

it's again set in the year 1946, one year after the concentration camps were freed. and Dawn is about, like Wiesel, a survivor of the concentration camps, but someone who has now been recruited. into a terrorist cell, fighting to end the occupation of Palestine.

So, he's, he's moved to Palestine and he's fighting to end the occupation. which, history lesson, um, was occupied by the British. 

Lily: Mm 

Cole: so there was a Jewish resistance movement as well as an Arab resistance movement to end the British occupation of Palestine. So remember how prosecutors of Nuremberg were sort of called out for being for invading other places and colonizing other places like Britain.

We're looking at you. So this guy, Alicia is trying to fight the British, and they're using terrorist tactics, and the British have a hostage that they are going to execute at dawn, fellow freedom fighter who they're going to execute at dawn. And Alicia, this character, has been tasked with executing a British hostage in [00:54:00] retaliation.

And so he's waiting up all night until dawn to kill this British hostage. And I mean, the entire book, there's, there's a lot of staring out of windows at nighttime because the entire book is Alicia just waiting up all night long, waiting for dawn to come, because even though he knows death intimately as a survivor of the concentration camps, he's never once been the one to hold the gun and he's agonizing all night long, with this perverse, Reality that suddenly role has switched and suddenly he's the one who's going to be the killer.

and there's this beautiful, this beautiful symbolism in there about staring out of windows. And, he talks about how to know when it's night outside. you know when it's night outside when you look out of a window and you see a face. And well sure you see your, your face reflected back.

But, I found it really beautiful symbolism because if you think about his book, Knight, that he wrote before, Knight is about the horrors that man are capable of committing to fellow [00:55:00] man, the atrocities that he's witnessed of men killing each other. And now in this book, Dawn, The main character is the one staring into the night and seeing himself in the reflection and really struggling with that new identity.

and I think Kira, she's gazing out into the stars and she's trying to come to terms with these emotions where she's actually wanting vengeance. She's wanting retribution, and she's wanting to persecute any Cardassian who was there. but something's not right. 

Lily: Mm

And the, looking into the window and seeing a reflection, it's the holding a mirror up to your basest instincts as a person. the need for retribution, 

Cole: Both, both Kira and Alicia have been freedom fighters.

So they've been in, in battle but there's something, premeditated and cold about an execution that. 

Lily: Yes. 

Cole: Really brings up, having to face their own hatred and their own motivations. Mm and their own relation to death. 

Lily: and that is the duality of [00:56:00] cold that he can, turn that stonker of a sane into something poetic and interesting and with depths. And then also, That guy playing a Cardassian has a funny run. 

Beautifully done, Cole. Thank you. next scene we're in ops, and Myles has an intern. I think this was supposed to lead somewhere that it didn't. but for the moment I'm happy that he, uh, has the load taken off.

we've got someone helping 

Cole: him. It's as much of a wedged in scene as that random golden alien strutting through. It has no place in this episode, but 

for the next episode after this, they wanted you to know that O'Brien had a pretty young assistant, and then the plot moves on. 

Lily: That's great. Love it. 

we go to Odo and Odo's done his, uh, due diligence.

and Maritza as a file clerk, that claim is true. but then there's a pretty funny scene. it's like a bit of a CSI scene. they've, gotten their hands on The one photo that exists from the Galatep records, [00:57:00] of this guy Maritza, to ascertain if, he is who he claims to be.

and then Dax has to enhance the photo, 

. It's quite funny. He's like, enhance. And then he's like, you're not enhancing well enough.

It's also a bit of a boomer moment. Cause she's like, well, I've, I've done the program. Can you just wait a second, um, doing it. 

Cole: By the way, if only they had had some German filing clerks on the case, there would have been more photos preserved. Yeah, wow. We needed 

Lily: that. Call back anyway, it turns out that this photo record of Maritza, this guy doesn't look anything like him.

And after some more enhancing, they find, that the record show, this photo of Gul Dahil, who was the butcher of Galatep, and this is the man that they have in the holding cell. 

Cole: Dun, dun, dun, twist number two, that's Gul Dahil in the holding cell. What? 

Lily: Yep. And, uh, close up on Kira's face.

And she almost looks satisfied. Oh, yeah. It's a windfall for her. 

Cole: It's what she'd been yearning for, staring out that window. She's like, I want him to be so much worse than he is. And it's like this Christmas present given to her. 

Lily: It is. It's, [00:58:00] uh, all very convenient. then we're back in the interrogation room.

This is interrogation number two, between Kira and Maritza slash Dahil, and I'll start calling him Gal Dahil, and this is a great scene. 

Yes.

Lily: Kira confronts him, and he admits to being, Galil, the Butcher of Gala. Mm-Hmm. . And so therefore, he will be brought before the Be and War Crimes Tribunal. and is basically extremely glib about the deaths of all the Bajorans.

He seems to be bragging and baiting Kira's ire, talking about the Bajorans as weak and, that they needed to be taken in hand and Kira takes the bait. he gleefully describes how he was this incredible Leader, and he would, have these insane punishments.

and he did it indiscriminately. but he feels so justified in that. He says, I did what had to be done. I ordered my soldiers to kill all the Bajoran scum. the soldiers would go and kill them and then they'd come back covered in blood, but they felt clean.

and he talks about exterminating Bajorans and, you know, this is very, evocative language, for sort of ethnic [00:59:00] cleansing they're cleaning, exterminating, describing them as scum, you know, this is sort of language that we're quite familiar with.

when, one group of people justified in exterminating another group of people and he, he tells her you've already lost major because you can never undo what I've accomplished and the dead will still be dead. Um, and in a way that, you know, she's come in sort of claiming victory.

 Ha, I know who you are and you're going to be, judge for what you've done and he sort of steals that back away from her and, then he also sort of throws in something about how he knows about Shakar.

I think this is the first time the Shakar are mentioned in the series. Um, but that's sort of the resistance group that she was, part of. 

Cole: Yeah. enter the criminal mastermind, face of pure evil. 

Lily: Yeah.

Cole: and I do, I do really love Harris Ulan's acting in this scene. Um, well, he's not running.

He can't run around. He's just stuck in that cell. So he just has to, has to talk. Thank God for that. 

Going back to, Nuremberg, A [01:00:00] lot of this is actually pulled right out of the trials of Nuremberg. for one thing, a lot of the Nazi leaders immediately after the end of the war, used aliases to try to hide and evade capture.

and the allies had to, find, all these top Nazi deputies living under aliases of much, lower ranking men, , 

Cole: you know, as file clerks and things. So here's Darheel, hiding as a, as an underling. Um, At one point, Kira just yells at Darheel, You're insane.

Lily: Yeah.

Cole: Insanity was actually used by the defense lawyers as a tactic of defense in Nuremberg. 

They actually tried to suggest 

Cole: that antisemitism is a form of insanity. I have heard of this, Yeah, and the judges ruled, 

no, no, anti semitism is not insanity, 

Cole: But, you know, it made me connect it to discussions of moral panic and group think that we talked about in last episode.

Can an entire society have a moral panic, about antisemitism or racism or hatred? Um, Um, and can then that get bound up [01:01:00] into group think and can it be connected to a form of insanity? the judges rightly ruled that , that is not by any means an excuse for Um, Mm. and then lastly, Darhiel, he played dumb. He pretended to be this file clerk until he was caught. Rudolf Hess, who, was the deputy to Hitler and was tried at, Nuremberg. He actually feigned amnesia. And for months and months, he just, yeah, he just sat there saying he didn't know his name.

He couldn't give you the name of his wife. He had no idea what was happening. And then. several months into the trial, he just stood up and went to the front of the quorum and he said, Excuse me, I have an announcement. I have been pretending to be an amnesiac this entire time. he said, The reasons, the reasons why I simulated the loss of memory were of a tactical nature, but I am now ready to take full responsibility for everything I have done.

or signed for. And then he just, he just owned it, which is kind of chilling. Yeah. But these are all tactics of the Goldar Heels of the Holocaust. 

Lily: Yeah. this is a chilling scene where [01:02:00] he, does appear to be owning it and feeling justified, with these actions. 

Cole: Yeah. 

Lily: It's, um, lesser parallel to Eichmann and the banality of evil, because it just, it seems to be flat out evil. 

Cole: Yes. He just, he seems to 

Lily: be an absolute monster, an absolute villain. 

Cole: yes. which I think is, is interesting. And we can discuss that swing in his behavior.

Yeah. 

Lily: Yeah, tricks and turns. what I see. These Cardassians, 

Cole: they keep you guessing. 

Lily: They really do. 

Cole: And you, you love them for it. You're so into that. 

Lily: I love them. They're competent. They're kind of skeezy. I don't know. I have a real way with words, you know, all the things I like in a person.

Cole: This episode cannot be about why Lily is into Cardassians. That is not the thesis of this podcast. 

Lily: Oh my god. 

Cole: Nope, 

Lily: Okay. so the next scene, Kira is sitting full on in Odo's office, but like a good friend, he's brought her, of, uh, seave ale, uh, saying it will help.

And it's seave [01:03:00] ale, which I think is definitely not synth. so thank God he's like brought her some real alcohol. 

Cole: Yeah, I think Kira's having the hard stuff. You're right. And she deserves it after that horrific encounter with, Gu Satan himself.

Lily: yeah, I would need a stiff drink too 

Cole: Butcher of Galatep. 

Lily: She says, I hate his smirking, superior, Cardassian face. and he is pretty smirking. and Harris 

Cole: Yulin. The guy knows how to smirk. 

Lily: He does. 

Cole: yeah, she, finally invokes the word that she's been accused of by Maritza and Dukat in this episode. she says, I hate him. 

Lily: Yeah. 

Cole: and I, I think it's a big moment in the episode she's confessing this to Odo.

I think it's a part of her that's ashamed that she hates someone as passionately as she hates Gul'dar Heal. this book Dawn by Elie Wiesel, if I can briefly go back to it. there's a line from there where this, Jewish freedom fighter is, pondering, whether he has hatred in his heart.

and he thinks to himself, a man hates his enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself, this fellow, my enemy has made me [01:04:00] capable of hate. I hate him not because he's my enemy, not because he hates me, but because he arouses me to hate. And I think, yeah, Kira hates these Cardassians because They've, turned her into a hateful, vengeful person.

Lily: Yeah, when she holds up the mirror, when she looks out into the night, and sees herself, she sees, what she's being, portrayed as. What she's been 

Cole: turned into. 

Lily: By Dahil as the Bajoran fanatic hate field and wanting revenge. And she, she looks out into the night and she sees that that's true. 

Cole: this terrorist cell in British Palestine, they're taught the 11th commandment, hate your enemy. 

Lily: Pretty sure that's not on there Pretty sure. 

Cole: I think the tablet got lost, top of Mount Sinai.

Lily: No, it's just like really, really tiny writing. Yeah, that's 

Cole: right. it made me think, I was wondering if it reminded you of the scene too, but do you remember back in Battle Lines when Kira has that beautiful scene with Kayopaka, um, and, You know, Opaka is just silently sitting [01:05:00] with Kira as she's dealing with all this PTSD and, and rage and violence, and she's trying to insist to Opaka, her spiritual leader, um, that's not me.

I had to fight, but I don't enjoy that. That's not who I am. I'm not this violent person without a soul, without a conscience. and so she's still grappling with this worry that she's, been stained by this, this violence and this hatred 

Lily: look, it is a part of her. 

So Odo, he counsels Kira her that she probably shouldn't divulge any personal details to Dahil. and Kira's saying, well, but I didn't. and he says, well, how did this guy know about the Shakar, if you didn't tell him, a little plot point that Odo is calling bullshit on this situation. how could he possibly know about this? 

Cole: Yeah, while , this whole holocaust analogy is going on. This episode also kind of plays out like a Law Order episode. Like, unspooling this mystery. Totally. It's 

Lily: CSI and law and order. I mean, it's always law and order for Odo, let's be honest. That's the TV show that he's in. 

Cole: Dun dun. 

.

Lily: so that takes [01:06:00] us to interrogation number three. Gal Dahil, lies on the bed, , and he tells Kira Oh my.

 You are a strutting little egotist. which is hilarious. Things only a 

Cole: Cardassian would say, right? 

Lily: Tahir references, Maritza's filing system, which held records of all the terrorists. you know, because, Kira's sort of questioning how I knew about the Shakar. 

Dahil then requests that there be an interrogation of his own of Kira, so it's like a little quid pro quo, uh, Clarisse. and yeah, I think this episode has been referenced as being, quite similar to Silence of the Lambs, 

Cole: especially when, Darhiel is just spewing this, know, he's talking about cleansing the rabble of Bajor.

It is as disturbing as, Hannibal Lecter talking about, eating some brains with some, Chianti. 

Lily: and Father Beans. Gotta have your sides. 

but meanwhile, outside, Odo's office, some of the survivors of Galatep have shown up, and they're wearing these gray shrouds over their mouths and that's sort of, some questions about like what's happened to them, that their faces are [01:07:00] covered.

Is it mourning? Is it something horrible that's happened to them in the camp? but yeah, there's sort of this specter, almost like living ghosts I guess, sort of quietly asking for retribution. Um,

Cole: living ghost. I like that. 

Uh, 

Lily: Meanwhile back in lore and order Odo we, go to a scene between Odo and Dukat, and he says, Ugh, the same old odo, like a blunt instrument. which is not wrong.

he's the hammer, as we've discussed. Yeah, 

Cole: I like that. 

Lily: He's a straight shooter. 

Cole: Dukat just reminds me such a politician here. He's like, Oda, remember we used to play that fun game? And Oda's like, um, that was one time and you cheated. Like, don't, don't try to charm me.

Like, Ducat details. 

Lily: Dukat reveals that, actually, Gald Dahil is dead and buried. 

Cole: What? 

Lily: What? 

Cole: Twist number three, Dahil's dead. 

Lily: It's twisty turny. There's photos of him. Is he dead? Is he alive? Who is this guy? and why would this man lie about being Dahil? because all that it does is serve to have him self executed. Speculates that, this is some plot that's been, concocted to embarrass the Cardassian [01:08:00] Empire. and then Odo uses this as leverage to look through the files pertaining to the real Galadriel's death. 

Cole: Not so blunt now, are you, Odo? You just cleverly manipulated Dukat into sharing Cardassian files. 

Lily: Yeah, maybe he's got a future in politics, who knows? Yeah, 

Cole: oh lord. Yeah, Dukat says that Darhiel is buried under one of the largest monuments in 

Lily: Cardassia. 

Cole: Talk about the embodiment of a totalitarian state.

A guy who ran a labor camp has a military monument in his honor. I mean 

Lily: Sure, 

Cole: sure. 

Lily: Look, that's a politicized issue, but I guess you only have to look at the kind of monuments in the West, to the kinds of people that we, uh, holding up on literal pedestals. 

Cole: Yeah, 

Lily: but we're back in the interrogation room again. 

Kira is recounting how she started fighting at age 12 

Cole: Yeesh. 

Lily: Which is horrifying. a child soldier, really. But Dahil wants to know exactly how many Cardassians she's personally killed.

I guess to, hold the mirror up and say that, you know, you've committed murder too. he claims that she must have kept count. and that she [01:09:00] probably killed not just military personnel, but also civilians. how many Cardassian civilians did you kill, he yells, and Kira admits she regrets a lot of what she had to do, but feels like she had no choice in the matter, as it was a matter of survival.

Dahil uses the same line of reasoning to justify what he did, saying that it was, survival based on, resources, that were needed for the empire. , 

Cole: Yeah, we had, we had an empire to protect. 

Lily: exactly.

and I guess that's another, sort of colonizers or invaders, line of logic you know, we need this in order to survive in order for our economy to thrive or whatever, 

Cole: it's straight out of Nuremberg I mean, Hitler told his, top men, like, the empire needs to expand to feed a growing Germany.

And these men on trial were like, look, we're following orders. For the good of the empire. Nationalism was their justification, plain and simple.

Lily: Yeah. And then he, literally says, I loved my homeland. That's what justified my actions. That's what gave me strength, to which Kira responds. Nothing justifies genocide, which, is a meme I think we've all seen on the internet a lot lately, if [01:10:00] you follow Star Trek memes..

Cole: Wait, have they actually taken, this line and turned that into a Star Trek meme? 

Lily: Yeah. 

nothing justifies genocide that's being used a lot. 

Cole: in relation to, uh, the news at the moment. 

Lily: Palestine and Israel. 

Cole: Hmm. 

So, she says, nothing justifies genocide. And then his response is, what you call genocide, I call a day's work.

Lily: Ugh, the banality of evil. 

Cole: Yes. can I give you a brief Hannah Arendt, philosophy lesson?

Lily: place, 

Cole: so Arendt observed this banality of evil in the Eichmann trial, and she, she really wanted to understand how. how that banality of committing atrocities happened, how totalitarianism had rendered German society capable of regarding evil as business as usual, matter of fact, routine.

and in her book, The Human Condition, she argues that Human day to day life can be divided into three fundamental activities. and those three basic activities are labor, work, and action. those sound kind of like the same thing, but they're important distinctions. So labor, she says, is just the necessary [01:11:00] activities humans have to do to survive, to meet their basic needs.

eating, sleeping, finding shelter. is about producing things. It's about creating objects that persist beyond immediate consumption, creating the world around you that survives beyond you. so, building streets, making stuff at a factory, that, does that make sense?

That's an 

Lily: interesting one because is it, creating things for benefit of others or is it like legacy building or it's just production? 

Cole: yeah, what end, right? There's something, there's something bigger than you. You're adding to this. the society and this community around you that is bigger than you.

. Right. so that's work. And then, the third one is action and, action is the realm of political and social engagement.

That's where people are. Communicating their opinions to each other, debating with each other, making decisions together in the public realm, and engaging with ideas. So, labor work in action. Let's think about what was [01:12:00] happening at Galatep labor camp. 

Lily: mm hmm. 

Cole: Labor. it's a forced labor camp. And the Bajorans were limited to doing nothing but labor.

, they were essentially dehumanized and, forbidden to do anything beyond their most basic survival. they were limited to just that very first level of human activity, just that subsistence. work. what sort of work was happening at this camp? Uh, how about Maritza, the exemplary file clerk, making all those files.

was just producing this massive filing system, doing the hard work, being that cog in the nationalist machine, but was there any action? Was there political engagement at Galatep? No, even the Cardassians, who were the overlords, because they're part of this really strict military system, forbidden from doing anything with their lives beyond the work. 

And that's exactly how Arendt understood totalitarianism. it stunted the ability for anyone in that system to operate or, or think on a level beyond just doing the [01:13:00] work. and the work is, valued and it's celebrated. you're judged by how hard you work, how much you contribute to the machine.

Maritza received one accolade after another for his meticulous filing. And he chased that reward. And , Arendt saw that same value system in Nazi Germany where people were rewarded for efficiency, proficiency, but they were strictly denied any ability to think beyond that and engage in any meaningful sense in that sort of action Arendt talks about.

Lily: Yeah, so it, creates sort of a perfect situation for someone like Eichmann to thrive. 

Cole: Absolutely. Yep. 

Lily: Or Maritza, 

Cole: Yeah. I mean, Eichmann too was just chasing those, rewards he literally said he was chasing promotions. 

Lily: Yeah, getting a gold star. 

Cole: was chasing those gold stars trying to efficiently execute 

Lily: Sorry, poor choice of words 

Cole: Oh, oh Lord. . 

Lily: Shit. Merit, that merit He was chasing that merit certificate. Merit certificate. 

Cole: Um, the Nazi system rewarded those people [01:14:00] and stifled any, Ability to think and question beyond that and, and think what the work was actually for.

Um, 

so that's your brief philosophy lesson and we'll hold on to those three, uh, those three human activities. 

Lily: great. Logging it away. 

Cole: she also sees, well, maybe I'll talk about this later, but she sees the same problems in the basic capitalist system where you have people chasing promotions, chasing those, rewards for doing the hard work, and in the capitalist system, that's that highest level that you're, you're striving for.

And it's not anything more meaningful than that. So, um, she's not like. Yay capitalism. 

Lily: Yeah. I mean, are any of us? 

Cole: it's interesting.

 She became very critical of capitalism because she saw that, work was the highest anyone was encouraged to, achieve as a person 

but she was also critical of communism because communism, only talks about people in an economic sense. the way people are discussed in the communist system, they're limited to their economic value. Um, communism also doesn't have space for that, That engagement beyond being [01:15:00] a cog in the machine.

Lily: Yeah, pretty similar in that regard to capitalism. 

Cole: Yeah. 

Lily: gosh, what would she think of late stage capitalism? Uh, horrifying hellscape, perhaps. 

Well, I'm feeling some existential dread. Keep it light. Keep it glib. That's, that's why I'm here.. 

Cole: thank God. glibness saves the world, Lily. We need you. 

Lily: Um, just to detour from this Light and Thought slightly, this scene, it really sort of, the pacing and the musical score, it really feels like a horror film.

It, does start to feel quite Silence of the Lambs. I don't know if you noticed that, but it's, just this incredible tension, to be a jump scare or something. 

Cole: Yeah, I think this came out maybe a year or two after Silence of the Lambs.

Did it! So, I I mean, it has to be an influence. We're talking about all the different influences of this episode. I think it's definitely there. That's it. 

Lily: okay, moving on, Odo is, presenting his findings to Sisko. and for all the combing he's done through the records, they show that, Gal Dahil did actually die in his sleep six years ago.

and that also, he never had Kalonora [01:16:00] syndrome. Kira saying, this has got to be lies, you know, Galdikat is, slippery slimy. Of course he's made this up and falsified these things. but then Odo, he sort of goes further and he says, well, actually this man, Eamon Maritza, the guy we've got in this holding cell, he put all his affairs in order.

And then requested make a stop at DS9. Implying, well, did he actually just want to be captured? and is that why he's so bad at sprinting? 

Cole: exactly.

All right. It was a careful acting choice by Harris Yulin. Sorry, Mr. Yulin. 

Lily: but then they get the real kicker and Dr. Bashir comes in and drops the bomb that, The man in the holding cell has been taking a regeneration agent for the past five years.

and this is only something that one would take after having extreme cosmetic alteration. so, twist, twist, twist! This guy has changed his face so that he looks like Gal Dahil. 

Cole: we got more twists than a pretzel up in here. 

Lily: That's right, this is, A pack of chicken twisties if you're [01:17:00] Australian. 

Cole: Australian.

Yeah, that's, Australian reverence. 

Lily: They're delicious. so yeah, this is some crazy shit, Col. 

Cole: by the way, Darheel I just love the fact that Darheel, we know he doesn't have Kalinor Syndrome because during the mining accident, he was back on Cardassia receiving his Proficient Service Medallion.

Ooooooh. 

Lily: I mean, 

Cole: whoever, I mean, That is a merit 

Lily: badge if ever he got one. 

Cole: I'm saying, the writers of this episode, Peter Allen Fields wrote the teleplay, they must have read Arendt or at least had a really masterful understanding of totalitarianism and the Nazi state, because you know, even the guys at the top were just chasing those promotions.

Lily: If you are a writer on Deep Space Nine, can you really be one without, an understanding of the human condition, 

no is the answer. Maybe if you're the person who wrote, Move Along Home. 

Cole: Um, that was a careful, reimagining of The Odyssey by Homer, so. 

Lily: No, you're right. A 

Cole: reader of the classics, Lily. 

Lily: That was brilliant. I'm sorry. 

Cole: Come on. 

Lily: [01:18:00] I've been looking at too many memes and I've, I forgot to, look at the actual text, which is our podcast. Okay. Interrogation number four, you ready? Let's do we've just had this bomb dropped, Kira goes in and she questions this guy's Kalanora symptoms, you know, why do you have these Kalanora symptoms and how are you feeling? And this frustrates him, even more so when she gets the meat of it and asks, well, why are you pretending to be Gal Dahil?

Like, what's the deal, man? and then he sort of loses his temper and he says, well, why don't you ask me something intelligent? And he begins this tirade of recounting what he slash Gal Dahil did, when they left Bajor, , ordering all of the laborers to be slaughtered. He's in this tirade and he says, he regrets not just killing them all.

and he says to Kira, I'm your nemesis. I'm your nightmare. I'm the butcher of Galatep. 

Cole: Yeah,

I'm the face of pure evil. 

Lily: I'm the thing that you wanted me to be.

I am like the source of the misery of the Bajoran that's what I stand for. Akira's like, nah, mate, you're Eamon [01:19:00] Maritza. And he denies this. he calls Maritza a useless, crying loser, who every night covered his ears because he couldn't bear to hear the screaming for mercy of the Bajorans.

He breaks down into subs and begins to recount things, from his own perspective, as Eamon Maritza.

I couldn't bear to hear those horrible screams, you have no idea what it's like to be a coward, to see these horrors and do nothing. Maritza is dead. He deserves to be dead. and it's, well, Cole, 

Don't leave me alone. In the terror, the horror. 

Cole: if you have a dry eye, whenever Maritza breaks down, then you are dead inside. And I don't know, uh, May God have mercy on your soul. 

Lily: Yeah. and I guess we're sort of, we're seeing the mirror that Maritza looks into when he looks out into the night. 

Cole: Yeah. Beautiful. Um, 

Lily: Kira lowers the shields, to let Maritza go.

She says, you didn't commit those crimes and you couldn't stop them. You're only one man, which is like, pretty enlightened of her. [01:20:00] because he was there, but obviously he feels this horrible remorse and guilt that's eating him to the point where he's, changed himself into the Butcher of Galatea, who was doing these atrocities, that he felt he had no power to stop

Cole: It's a huge evolution from the beginning of the episode where she's ready to sentence him. She declares him guilty for simply being a Cardassian on Bajor. 

Lily: and he insists that he needs to be punished and that we all have to be punished, collectively, the Cardassians, for what they've done.

and he claims that his trial, will force Cardassia to acknowledge its guilt in what happened, you know, bringing this stuff to light, like in the Nuremberg trials. sort of putting it on this, on the stage 

Cole: yeah, he talks about his, motivation he wants Cardassia to, have a reckoning, I guess, he wants Cardassia society to look into the mirror, and he sees it as a way for Cardassia to survive and move forward, for the, the health of their society.

They have to, address The ghosts of their past 

So I think one thing that always bothered me a bit about this episode is I couldn't understand why Maritza, this repentant [01:21:00] file clerk, is so nasty to Kira, just so vitriolic and horrible and making her feel like scum.

I realized Maritza is Trying to, play that part of the, evil genius to represent that satanic greatness of the oppressor, to give Bajorans the satisfaction of, apprehending and killing pure evil. he's trying to give the Bajorans what the Israelis wanted in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, but instead got this, boring, banal bureaucrat.

you know, they, they were faced with this, loser who just wants promotions and they wanted, to stare into pure evil and exact vengeance. and Maritza is trying to, in a really fucked up way, trying to give that satisfaction to Kira and 

And he's using all his Kardashian rhetoric to play the part. 

Lily: Sort of serving himself up on a platter, to executed.

Cole: yeah, so, there were Nazi war criminals who, uh, expressed, repentance and contrition, like Marica is here. One of the 22 men who was on trial at Nuremberg, actually, this is interesting. This is Hans Frank, who was the governor of occupied Poland, And [01:22:00] he, he was sentenced to death for his crimes there, but during the trial he was asked, Did you ever participate in the annihilation of Jews?

And his response, was, I say yes, and the reason why I say yes is because having lived through the five months of this trial, and particularly after having heard the testimony of Witnesses on the ground.

My conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility solely on these minor people, 

Lily: Mm.

Cole: Frank was one of these desk killers and These minor people like the ones who were actually carrying out the the peons, the soldiers down in the camps, right? My conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility solely on them.

 I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews or promoted the existence of such camps, but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too. Therefore, it is no more than my duty to answer your question in this connection with yes.

A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased. Oof. Which sounds just like Maritza saying, we're guilty, all of us. 

Lily: That we need to be punished. [01:23:00] All of us 

Cole: and as you said, so Nuremberg, it served so many functions beyond just trying these 22 people. It served as a way to reveal the truths, to the world and to the German people, especially a way to, open the eyes of a lot of German people who had maybe looked the other way or been in denial.

but it was also a way for, over the course of the trial, all these eyewitnesses who had played a role in the camps came forward to testify. And it became a way for all these sort of minor people, as Hans Franck calls them, to speak their truth. And confess, you know, um, it, it wasn't just a trial, but it was a confessional.

The way that Maritza seems to have this need to confess his crimes, to the Bajoran people. And that's, what a lot of people, the foot soldiers of the empire did during the Nuremberg trials. 

Lily: Hmm. 

Cole: Isn't it interesting, though, that, when Maritza talks about his motivations, he's still nationalist to the last.

 He's doing it for Cardassia. He's still wired to sacrifice for the empire. He's just decided that this is what he needs to do, to advance the empire. So that nationalism is still [01:24:00] baked in there. 

Lily: It's still baked in there. I don't think it's the sole motivator. the, you know, sort of unbearable agony of hearing. the Bajorans being slaughtered and I think that there's something that still totally resonates with him and the human condition, the Cardassian condition.

Cole: yeah, I agree. it's interesting. You have two nationalists talking to each other in this episode, who are, you know, if you were to describe Kira, she's a loyal Bajoran who is dedicated her life to the good of Bajor. And so you have these two, servants of their respective people, which I think is a really interesting.

Yeah. But I, 

Lily: I think it's, um, also they're just, they're both so, traumatized from experiencing the horrors, the sort of abject horrors of the war and, 

Cole: Yep. 

Lily: she says, um, what you're asking for is another murder and enough good people have died and I won't help kill another.

I won't be part of, basically saying, I won't be part of this execution that you're sort of requesting, as repentance and, absolution, 

Cole: by the

okay, this, book, Dawn, the end of Dawn, Alicia does, fulfill his duty to his people and his, [01:25:00] his unit and kill this British soldier, and Kira, Kira makes a different choice here. she makes the choice of common humanity, and decides she's done with good people being killed.

Lily: well, she's looked at herself at the duality of Kira. It's Kira the, um, the benevolent, empathetic, person, and Kira the executioner, and she's made the choice.

So Kira and Odo escort Maritza from out of the brig, and Kira insists that, what he tried to do was honorable, but that Cardassia will need people like him in order to make change, to Cardassia, they need that empathy. 

Cole: well, they need someone to testify. 

Lily: testify and take responsibility and, provide the records what? It's Chekhov's blue shirt Pejorin.

some might say I foreshadowed this, in the beginning of this episode he runs up behind Maritza and stabs him in the back, he falls to the ground. Kira holds Maritza as he dies reaLly quickly, 

Cole: very quickly. 

Lily: and she demands of the Bajoran, why did you kill [01:26:00] him?

to which Blue Shirt replies with, vitriol. He's Cardassian. That's reason enough. And the final line of the episode, Kira responds, it's not. 

Cole: when I watched this episode when I was younger, I really hated this ending. I thought it was too abrupt. I thought it was too pat. I thought it was just saying, Oh, racism is bad.

And it was, wrapped up too suddenly. and it, bothered me because it It was such a banal death. 

Lily: Mmm.

Cole: Looking closely at this episode for this recording, it hit me, yeah, it's banal death for brave person like Maritza who's trying to, to speak truth to horror.

and, I think Kira's horror the way she, looks up in horror at this, drunk Bajoran murderer, . I think she's, she's horrified, not just at Maritza's death, but, she's fearing for the soul of Bajor.

Lily: Mmm.

Cole: she's singing this banal act of violence in a Bajoran. and she's, terrified that, the Bajoran people have inherited this casually thoughtless violence from their oppressors. Um, is, the [01:27:00] senselessness of death, in the Bajoran people now too.

And I think that's. terror you see in her eyes at the end of the episode. it, again, it reminds me of that, battle lines episode where Kira is fearing for her own soul. And I think she's fearing for the soul of Bajor now. And she's, she's like, I've inherited, I've got the stain of violence and hatred , from my time in the resistance do the Bajoran people also have this inherited violence? Um, 

Lily: it's still maybe guilty of that Star Trek way of like, Oh, we've got 30 seconds left.

Boom. but I just. the violence is just so casual. 

And I, I think it actually works well dramatically, with the episode in that what we've gotten is a bottle episode with sort of these quite long drawn out, conversations between two people, where the drama has just been, with language and rhetoric and you're sort of taken on this verbal journey and then there's just this sort of very abrupt, quick physical act And that's it. You know, I think it's actually quite neat and quite, shocking, in a way that works for me, dramatically.

Cole: yeah, well, and it shows, it shows the power of violence to just [01:28:00] snuff out, I mean, this entire episode of dialogue and then suddenly an act of violence just, you know, ends everything. Um. Not to 

Lily: mention years of planning and plastic surgery and 

Cole: Right. 

Memorizing like Gul Darheel's favorite condiment. You know, he had, he's like, Darheel always had breakfast with yarmulke sauce. 

Lily: Then it's done and then it's not with a bang, but with a whimper, 

Cole: Oof, the last episode, Jomatis Personae, the big theme there was, history is cyclical.

You see history repeating itself. But I was thinking that in that episode, the violence is actually an infection that the crew of Deep Space Nine are infected with. And in some way, that's what's happening here. history is repeating itself because violence is passing on like an infection.

and the banality of violence is, is an infection that, maybe Bajor has to grapple with.

Lily: An eye for an eye and you leave the world blind where does it end? 

Cole: Wiesel calls it, the cycle of violence and rage. And, uh, he's horrified to see that playing out, in Israel 

Lily: Mmm.

Cole: To go back to a rent and her, her three [01:29:00] activities. labor, work and action. I think nationalism is a big target of criticism here. for the Cardassians and for the Nazis, nationalism was just a matter of fact, prerogative. It was some self evident truth that you were taught to not question. And I think When nationalism isn't up for debate and there's no room for political action, rational behavior goes out the window.

and then suddenly you can condone violence because it's just, You know, like , these Nazis who had to expand the empire. there's no room for debate. and I, I think nationalism today continues to be, to blame for a lot of senseless and horrific violence. Um, because it's just. not up for debate, the dangers 

Lily: of groupthink and that, groupthink precluding, action.

that's what we're talking about? Like political discussion? 

Cole: Exactly. 

Lily: Merit badge for Lily. Sorry.

Cole: lily, you get a gold star. Are we calling it a gold star again? 

Lily: I'm trying to avoid gold stars. 

Cole: yeah, all right.

, merit badge, achievement award. 

Lily: Thank you.

Cole: One,

one last question, Lily. Arendt obviously is big on action. And, for her, it's [01:30:00] not enough for someone to have a political opinion and just think about it. Um, action needs to be interactive. It needs to be relational. action needs to be engaging with others and sharing your opinions and listening to each other.

it's not just talking, but it's listening. 

Lily: It's like, starting a podcast, for example, 

Cole: I mean, so where, where was the action in this episode? 

Lily: Ooh. 

Cole: Um. 

Lily: okay, no, let me think about this, I guess, even though it's sort of misguided all of Maritza's, all of the steps that he takes.

His five years of Yeah, his five year, plan, 

Cole: So that's Maritza stewing and concocting this plan, but Arendt says action has to be interactive and relational.

And so he concocted this plan, he goes to carry it out. And then what happens? 

Lily: Um, whole lot of chitchat. 

Cole: Yeah. We have this, Tet a Tet, um, Cardassian Bajoran talking for a whole damn episode. , Maritza confessing and atoning , and Kira [01:31:00] listening and forgiving.

This entire episode of them talking to each other, that's the action, the duet. The duet of this episode is the action that Arendt says, um, is essential, just people listening to each other. And I think it's beautiful that this bottle episode of two people talking is actually what, Hot On Our Rents sees as the most, critical activity of the human experience.

 She also says, that action is the stuff that makes good stories. Storytelling is about, action, right? And, you know, love that as someone who's doing a podcast about Deep Space Nine, um, telling these stories, is action too.

Lily: And it's what we've been claiming all along, that, yes, as we were talking about that a lot of the time it is just people standing around talking to each other or, but these characters just sort of interacting with each other and, you know, Discussing things is what we love about Deep Space Nine.

Right? And we're backed up by Hannah Arendt. that's the meat of it. That's the juicy stuff. 

Cole: And you know, two people chit chatting while sipping wine, [01:32:00] uh, we're doing the action, Lily. 

Lily: We are doing the work, Cole. 

Cole: Merit badges all round. 

Thanks for watching!

Cole: man, Hannah Arendt, you know, she, fled Europe to New York City and settled in New York and, really fell in love with the American political system.

And she was a big believer in the promise of American democracy. She thought it created the system. Space for political engagement, uh, people listening to each other, people respecting opinions, uh, having civil disagreement, and, I just, I pray for the health of the American system that we can still find those ways to, uh, to talk to each other.

Lily: Yeah, how, Mr. Paulson, how are we feeling? I'm feeling Hopeful?

Because I suppose it shows that Qi'ra can change is the point. Yeah. 

Cole: I think, um, you know, Maritza gone too soon. What could have happened if he'd actually survived and gone to Bajor, [01:33:00] answered for Cardassian crimes. But, um, in this, this duet of dialogue between the two of them, Qi'ra evolves by leaps and bounds.

Lily: Hmm. 

Cole: And I think her story arc over seven years is about, well, healing from her wounds and, building bridges with Cardassians and, 

Lily: and understanding shared shared humanity. Yeah. Understanding nuance

Cole: Yeah. , 

Lily: I'm feeling, bit CABSAV'd out, it was a good one, 

Cole: It was a great bottle episode, 

Lily: Yeah. And a great bottle. 

Cole: Mm. is it time for a little fashion watch? Or is that a, an insult to, this episode? 

Lily: Look, like I said, I was going to call a moratorium on it, but, I think there's a clear winner. And it's, uh, the wigs for me. No, it's gold, yes, it's 

Cole: Cardassian wigs, makeup watch, luscious hair, 

Lily: Love a thick head of hair on a Cardassian man. No, it's, it's Gold Alien. vertical slip mouth, Gold Alien. 

Cole: For what it's worth, have spotted these vertical mouth aliens in the background of other episodes, and it makes me happy. 

Lily: Ooh! Fab continuity. So [01:34:00] he does belong there..

Cole: yeah, he's a happy denizen of the station, and I can't wait to see what he wears next time.. 

Cole: But shout out to the Cardassian uniforms. , the Romulans and the Cardassians. I think they win for best, uh, villain, military garb. 

Lily: oh yeah. Cardassian's totally modeled on, on the SS uniforms

Cole: Are they? 

Lily: You heard it here. Grey? Big shoulders?

Cole: okay, yeah, 

Well, we've um, you realize next week is the season finale. 

Lily: Oh, it feels like just yesterday. we were like a couple of newborn babes, stepping out into the wild world of podcasting and recapping episodes. yet here we are a lot more actors names than I did in that first episode. 

Cole: I'm so proud. You really have come far. 

That's your evolution. That's mine.

Lily: I've learned how 

Cole: to pronounce Rene Auberginois. 

Lily: Yeah, Like how bad everyone, 

Cole: sorry, Mr. Auberginois. I'm sorry I ever called you Mr. Eggplant. 

Lily: Yeah. We can be infantile sometimes, but you know, that's the duality of man, [01:35:00] isn't it?

Cole: We get real, we get glib. Uh, that's, we embrace our duality. Um, good news and bad news, Lily, next week is a Bajoran episode, but it introduces us to two of, Space Nine fans favorite Bajorans. 

Lily: Some of them are hot and some of them are not. 

Cole: Nurse Ratched is such a babe. Agreed. 

Well, Lily has always. I love it when we're cruising together. You're the Huey to. Gwyneth. on that note, till next week. To comment on this week's episode or any other, find us on Instagram at deep space wine underscore podcast.